Quickstart: Create and deploy an agent

Copilot Studio empowers teams to quickly and easily create powerful agents using a guided, no-code graphical experience without needing data scientists or developers.

This quickstart shows you how to create an agent for the first time. Learn how to:

• Add knowledge to your agent.
• Test content changes in real time.
• Publish your agent to a demo website you can share with others.

Create an agent

When you create an agent, you can describe everything you want your agent to be and do in your own words, or configure those details as separate pieces of information.

The examples in this quickstart create an agent called Friendly Tutor to help users learn about Copilot Studio using knowledge from the official Copilot Studio documentation. However, you can create your own agent using any publicly available website as a knowledge source.

1. Sign in to Copilot Studio, or sign up. You land on the Home page.

2. Enter a brief description of what you want your agent to be—for example, "Help users learn how to create agents with Copilot Studio." The description can have up to 1,000 characters.

   

   A page appears with two panes where you can chat with Copilot on the left-hand side, and see your agent's details dynamically updated on the right-hand side.

   Note

   The conversational agent creation experience uses your browser language. If your browser language isn't in the list of supported languages for the conversational agent creation experience, only the more discrete configuration experience is available.

3. Chat with Copilot in the left pane to further define your agent. Copilot asks questions to guide you, and uses your responses to fill in the details, such as the name, description, instructions, and knowledge, that define your agent.

   1. For this example scenario, tell Copilot you want to name your agent "Friendly Tutor." Notice the new name appears in the right-hand pane. The maximum length for the name is 30 characters.

   2. If desired, refine the instructions Copilot generated for your agent but keep them simple for now. Just make sure you include information about what your agent helps users do.

   3. Specify the desired conversation style and tone your agent should use—for example, "Friendly Tutor should talk to users like a kind, patient teacher."

   4. Add knowledge to your agent, if desired. For Friendly Tutor, tell Copilot you want to use https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-copilot-studio as a knowledge source.

4. Make your agent unique with a distinctive icon:

   1. Select the agent icon in the top bar.

   2. Select Change icon.

   3. Choose an image from your device. The image file must be in PNG format and less than 30 KB in size, with a maximum resolution of 192 × 192 pixels.

   4. Select Save.

5. Optionally, select a solution and set the schema name for your agent:

   1. Select the three dots in the upper right-corner and select Edit advanced settings.

   2. Select the desired solution, if applicable.

   3. Replace the default schema name with a distinctive name, if desired. You can't change the first part of the schema name, here: the selected solution determines this prefix.

   4. Select Save.

   After you have a name, icon, description, and instructions, your agent is ready.

6. Select Create. The Overview page for your agent appears. Now you can start testing and improving your agent.

Improve your agent

Now that you have an agent, you can test it more and improve it.

To open your agent, select Agents in the left sidebar, then select your agent.

Test changes to your agent

The best way to improve your agent? Test it. Make some changes. Test it again. Repeat.

In this section, you test how changing your agent's knowledge sources affects how your agent responds to users.

1. Start by testing how your agent currently responds in the test chat. Ask your agent a question. For example, ask: "How do I add a knowledge source?"

   

   In this example, the agent's instructions are to talk to users like a kind, patient teacher. What if you give your agent different instructions?

2. Go to the Overview page, and update the instructions for your agent to use a different tone, like talk to users like Jane Austen.

3. Test your agent's new instructions with another question. How has the response changed?

Change your agent's introduction

Help your agent make a great first impression with a new introductory message. This message lets users know what your agent does and encourages them to interact with your agent.

1. In the Test your agent chat, select your agent's introductory message. The Conversation Start topic opens, and the Message node for your introductory message is in focus.

   Tip

   If you can't see the introductory message in the test panel, select the Refresh icon at the top of the panel to restart the conversation.

2. In the Message box, select the text of the message.

   

3. Replace the default message with your own. In the introductory message, your agent should greet users, tell them what it does, and how to start interacting with it. You can also give users an example question or prompt.

   For Friendly Tutor, update the introductory message to say:

   Hello, I'm here to help you learn how to use Microsoft Copilot Studio. You can ask me all about agents: "What is an agent?" "How do I make an agent?" "How do agents work?"

4. Select Save.

5. To test this change, select the Refresh icon in the Test your agent chat panel.

Suggest ways of starting conversations

If your agent is meant to be used in Teams or Microsoft 365, you can configure up to six starter prompts to suggest ways your customers can start conversations with the agent. When you use the conversational agent creation experience, Copilot automatically generates starter prompts based on information in the description and instructions for the agent.

To add or update starter prompts:

1. On the Overview page, select the Edit icon at the top of the Starter prompts section.

2. Revise or add titles and prompts, as desired, and select Save when you're done.

Edit your agent's basics

You can change your agent's name, description, instructions, and knowledge sources after creating it. Remember to test your changes as you go!

To update your agent's name, description, or instructions:

1. On the Overview page, select Edit, at the top of the Details section.

2. Make your changes.

3. Select Save. Remember, editing the instructions changes how your agent engages with users. Make sure to test your changes.

To add a knowledge source:

1. On the Overview page, go to the Knowledge section, and select Add knowledge.

2. Select the desired type of knowledge. This quickstart uses Public websites sources.

3. Enter the URL for the website, then select Add beside the textbox.

4. Name and describe the knowledge source so you can keep track of all your agent's sources.

5. Select Add.

To change an existing knowledge source:

1. On the Overview page, go to the Knowledge section, and select the three dots (…) for the knowledge source.

2. Select Edit to change the knowledge source, or Delete to remove it from your agent's sources.

Publish your agent

Once you're happy with your agent, you can publish it to a website.

1. At the top of the page, select Publish, and then select Publish again in the Publish this agent confirmation message. If the publish is successful, you see a green banner on the top of the page.

2. At the top of the page, select the three dots (…) and select Go to demo website.

   

3. Send the URL to others to demonstrate it.

For more information about publishing your agent to other channels, see Key concepts - Publish and deploy your agent.

What's next?

You created an agent, tested it out, and published it to a demo site. Congratulations! Your agent has many more capabilities, so try it out and play with the advanced features.

For questions not covered in the documentation or for feature ideas, visit our community and post questions.

We'd love to hear your ideas on Copilot Studio. Visit our Ideas board and post your ideas.